Lucas Duda doesn’t consider it a laughing matter, but realizes jokes will be directed toward him upon arriving in Port St. Lucie, Fla., for early spring workouts next week.

In late October, the Mets outfielder was lifting a large TV stand with a friend as part of Duda’s move to a new Southern California address. Backpedaling — never his speciality — Duda’s heel got caught, sending him smacking to the floor, with his right thumb absorbing the impact.

“At first I didn’t think anything of it,” Duda told The Post yesterday. “I thought it was a sprain.”

About 1 1/2 weeks later, with the pain and swelling not subsiding, Duda contacted Mets trainer Ray Ramirez and was told to head for a nearby hospital. The diagnosis was a broken right wrist, for which Duda underwent surgery two days later in New York to insert a pin.

The self-pity followed.

“I couldn’t help but think ‘bad luck’ and I kind of felt stupid,” Duda said. “How could I do this? I was kind of depressed the first week and then I snapped out of it. It was just a stroke of bad luck and things happen, but I feel great now.”

Duda, projected as the Mets’ starting left fielder after struggling through 2012, began hitting from a tee on Monday and throwing with the idea of being ready for Grapefruit League play late next month.

When Duda arrives in Port St. Lucie Wednesday, hitting coach Dave Hudgens will be waiting for him to begin trying to improve on Duda’s lethargic .239 average with 15 homers and 57 RBIs in 401 at-bats last season.

The Mets still view the hulking 26-year-old Duda as untapped potential capable of hitting 30-plus homers and joining David Wright and Ike Davis to give the team a formidable 3-4-5 in the lineup.

The challenge for Hudgens is getting Duda to take the same swings during games as he does in batting practice.

“David Wright looks the same in the cage as he does during the game and Ike Davis is the same way,” Hudgens said. “With Lucas, it’s a little bit different. He’s a little calmer in the cage, and then he gets in the game, probably the adrenaline and the emotion of the game, he gets wound up and going 100 mph.”

Duda, who was sent to Triple-A in late July and returned for the final month of the season, said last year represented the first time in his athletic career he failed at anything.

“You fail on a day-to-day basis, but not on a yearly basis,” Duda said. “That was probably the biggest blow right there — knowing that you kind of failed and you had such a good opportunity, that’s hard for me to swallow. The Mets gave me a good chance to succeed and I feel like I failed.”

Manager Terry Collins said he hopes Duda’s full-time switch to left field after playing primarily in right last season makes a difference in the player’s mental approach. Duda never had played right field before last season — and it showed — but has experience in left from his college and minor-league days. The Mets played Duda in left for most of the final month last season.

“Last year when he came back up at the end of the year, he got better jumps and saw the ball off the bat better,” Collins said. “I think it will help him.”

Duda’s first order of business will be surviving jokes from teammates about his ineptitude moving furniture. Mike Pelfrey and Daniel Murphy were among the players who texted Duda during the offseason to tease him.

“They thought I was joking around and said, ‘You’ve got to come up with a better excuse than that,’ ” Duda said. “The break was just a terrible situation.”